New York City is a place of maximum diversity in minimum space, to borrow a phrase from the writer Milan Kundera. Its spiritual communities are no exception. Last year, the Public Religion Research Institute underscored this in a first-of-its-kind study that measured the religious diversity of every county in the United States.
Three of the city’s boroughs — Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens — were among the 10 most diverse counties in the country, according to the survey. The other two, Staten Island and the Bronx, were not far behind.
There is a dizzying array of global faiths across the five boroughs, from Black Baptist churches and Buddhist temples to Islamic high schools and L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly synagogues.
But the city is not just a home for many different world religions; it is also a place that empowers New Yorkers to express their faith — and share its treasures and ideals — in a multitude of ways.
“We have different cultures in New York, so we get anything we need,” said Frank Bell, a priest of Santería. His is an Afro-Cuban faith whose rituals require ceramics and other items found here affordably in abundance, from Yemeni bodegas in the Bronx to Ikea in Brooklyn.
“You can get herbs from the Arabs, fabric from the Indians or the Chinese,” he said. “This place, New York, is the best place in the world for our religion.”
In Queens, a Catholic church provides succor that extends beyond faith
Corona is home to a large working-class Latino immigrant community, and their commitment to Our Lady of Sorrows keeps its pews packed on Sundays.
“The Catholic Church in the United States, for Hispanic immigrants, is a place where people socialize,” said the Rev. Manuel De Jesús Rodriguez, its pastor. “People do their weddings here, people do their birthdays here, people do their quinceañeras and funerals here.”
Our Lady of Sorrows is woven into many aspects of neighborhood life, including some of its most troubled. The pastor said religion is “perhaps the most important” part of his work in Corona, “but it is not the only one.”
Corona was part of the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in New York. Covid-19 killed at least 100 parishioners at Our Lady of Sorrows and drove away thousands more who never came back when restrictions on in-person events were lifted.
Few places on Earth are home to as much cultural diversity as Queens. Forty-seven percent of its residents were born overseas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and
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